Huntingdon accounts withheld until auditors can be hidden

Huntingdon Life Sciences, the animal testing laboratories whose auditor resigned after becoming the target of animal rights activists, has been told that it does not have to file accounts in the UK until the Government passes legislation to protect the identity of its advisers.

HLS has not filed accounts since 2003 under a series of rolling exemptions granted by the Department of Trade and Industry. But a DTI spokesman said last week that circumstances were unlikely to change until legislation was introduced that would give auditors anonymity where a security risk existed.

The Government hopes to include the relevant measures in the Companies Bill, but that might not become law until the end of next year.

"The Government is fully aware of this issue and is considering how best to resolve it," the DTI spokesman said.

The Cambridgeshire company does its banking with the Bank of England, and its insurance is handled by the DTI, because commercial firms dare not do business with it. However, the company is unable to obtain an audit in the UK as this would reveal the auditor's identity when the accounts were published at Companies House.

The company's former auditor, Deloitte, resigned in 2003 after its offices around the world were targeted by animal rights activists.

HLS is audited in the US, but this is unacceptable in Britain because the audit firm involved is not UK registered.

An HLS spokesman said: "We are in a situation where anything that could be done to normalise our business practices would be welcome."

Measures proposed for the Companies Bill would exempt auditors from the obligation of signing off accounts and revealing their identities if they would be in danger from extremists.

But accountants believe the measures will not be adequate. Peter Wyman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: "There are inevitably large numbers of people at the audit firm who know the identity of the client and it only takes one of those to blow the whistle."